In his censored and wordless debut,
Mikhail Vartanov presents the ancient and modern art of Armenia though the eyes of the country's 90 year old master painter Martiros Saryan. We see biblical landscapes, ruins of temples, fading frescoes and the crumbling "khachkar" cross-stones in the countryside, but, in the subtle expressions on Saryan's wrinkled face, we also feel his pride in the contemporary architecture of the capital where a new generation of modernist artists are taking Armenian culture into the future. They are: the filmmaker Parajanov (imprisoned in 1973), the sculptor Tchakmaktchian (exiled in 1974), and the painter Minas (assassinated in 1975). Vartanov filmed the now world famous behind-the-scenes sequences of The Color of Pomegranates, whose future composer Tigran Mansurian, had also first scored The Color of Armenian Land and became a frequent collaborator of Vartanov, writing music for his Autumn Pastoral (1971), And So Every Day (1972), and Awaiting (1973). Suppressed during the Soviet era, the film placed
Mikhail Vartanov on KGB's blacklist (1967 - 1990s). When his artistic freedom was restored 20 years later, he responded with
Minas: Rekviem (1989) and his masterpiece
Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992).
—PARAJANOV.com